Firewire Card & Cable???

I would like some info on firewire cards & cables.
There seems to be a wide range of prices etc. & it is very confusing to a novice like myself to figure out what would be the best one for my purposes. Not wanting one that is too complicated, just want to be able to edit film taken with a mini DVD Sony camcorder. This is one of the latest models, & from what I hear people are having trouble with Windows XP recognizing the firewire card???
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, & Rod, if your out there, (you helped me with my last problem) please let me know what you think. Also the difference in prices (I know you only get what you paid for, but maybe I should talk to someone who can advise me with this situation. Like you guys!!
Thanks
Lucy

 

Hi Lucy: I'm new to this 1394 stuff too, but I thought I'd tell you about my experience. I recently bought a Cannon MiniDV camcorder so I also needed a firewire card. I purchased Dazzle's DV-Editor SE, a movie editing program that came with a firewire card and cable. ($49.00 from www.tigerdirect.com) I installed the card and restarted. (Windows XP Home) The machine recognized and installed the card without a hitch using drivers loaded when XP was installed. Plugged camera in and same results, no problems, it just appeared as another imaging device. Installed Dazzel Software, had to update at their website.

Can now upload from camcorder using either Windows Movie Maker ( I downloaded Movie Maker 2) or the Dazzle Movie Star 5 program that came with the firewire card. I have been disappointed with the quality of the uploaded video when played with Windows Media player on the computer. It is not as good as the camera playing its tape on the tv. On a 32 inch tv screen, the camera, playing the recorded tape has superior quality, and considering the size of the Media Player screen, this surprises me.

I have found editing movies difficult and challanging and have mixed results so far. On one occasion, when attempting to record a Video CD, Windows just tells me the file is to big and won't fit, without offering any options to span CDs. Also, Video CDs made with each program have considerable degrade of quality. The Dazzle video CDs will play on my televison through my set top DVD player, but for some reason refuse to play on my computers DVD player. The Windows Movie Make 2 Video CDs will play on the computer but refuse to play on the set top DVD player. Go figure.

I'm sure if you shop around the major online stores you can find a firewire card without the editing software cheaper. Movie Maker 2 is free software available at the Microsoft Download site.

I'm hoping that sometime soon I can scrap together $300. and buy a dvd recorder. Then maybe I can get some decent quality movies recoded on DVD to play on tv. In the meantime, I'm not erasing tape of anything I upload to machine to preserve the quality for future use.

So, good luck to you, hope it works out. And if you find a way to make good quality Video CDs that play on free standing DVD player, I sure would like to know the details.

 

To Martin 121
Thanks for info Martin, as soon as I can figure out a few things in your post & later when I decide which softward program to get, I will get back to you with my experiences etc.
Thanks again,
Lucy